Dots, Connecting and Colliding

The following “poem” is rough and raw because its just stream of consciousness poetry in the moment… but a Holy week poem for this year:

Dots, Connecting and Colliding

A shared lament with a friend rooted in her experience of Christian disdain for her Jewishness…
A quick text conversation about ministry where narratives of a sovereign God make no sense…
A call of tears and laughter; pretending we can say “have a good day” knowing it’s not possible…
Another call to one where all their concern is not for self but others… but the self needs care…
A process of renewal set on tracks and ready to roll when a disastrous but temporary halt is called…
Efforts at vulnerability mistook for weakness because real is so unexpected it’s unappreciated…
Planning a service that is about the unplanned…
Conveying the overwhelming power of a moment… to friends who fell asleep…

Damn.
Holy Week is so good at being Holy Week.
It’s only been 4 days… that cannot all have happened in a mere four days… right?
And we really haven’t even gotten to the “good” parts yet.

Here we are: Thursday. This is where all will start to unravel.
When a God-plan unravels… are we left with God at the end of it?
Or did we perhaps overstate from the beginning the idea of plan… and the idea of God?
We presumed far too much in the way of knowledge about how this was all supposed to work.
We were busy agreeing that this must be what it was supposed to be to see what it really is.

We love it when a plan comes together. Because so many of them don’t.
Painfully. Anxiously. Frustrating to a point of maddeningly so. Plans unravel.
All our plans.
And we look to find one whose plans don’t as if aspiring to lofty unattainable perfect will help.
We look to connect our unraveled self to “the well put together” as if it all rubs off on us.
And we try not to notice when it does… because its tarnished and not all that real after all.
Perfection is that way… it simply isn’t and cannot be.

But does the weaver of life do in response to the cycle of non-being???
The weaver of life chooses real over desirable.
The weaver of life sets about to unravel pretentions.
Disabuses perfection of its power.
Shatters its own lofty achievements.
The weaver dashes desirable to hell… and pulls the real up out of it.
Because lateral love is better than condescending ideals and hierarchical worship.

And still… we struggle to replicate it. Because the desirable is just so… desirable.
And the weaver is moved to greater and greater depths to show the beauty of loving what’s is
Really broken. Really pained. Really longing.
But always too: really loved. really worth giving up all the perfects for.
really worthy in all our unraveled quandry

That’s a story we all should all show up to… every week, but at least, in its own Holy week…
Damn…. maybe that was always the plan after all… eh, let’s not pretend to know. And bask instead in the knowing… no great love than this…